The task of congratulating the President on his
election to guide this thirty-seventh session of
the General Assembly and Mr. Perez deCuellar on
his appointment as Secretary- General is for me a
pleasant one. One is never at a loss for words
when praising famous men. With his appointment as
the fifth Secretary-General, Mr. Perez de Cuellar
joins a procession of illustrious predecessors,
each of whom has left a distinctive imprint on
some page of international history. The first was
Trygve Lie, a direct-speaking, if sometimes
emotional, man, whose objective was, through his
commitment to peace, to give credibility to the
United Nations. The second was Dag Hammarslqold,
a man who worked hard to build on the fundamental
principles of the United Nations, a peace-maker
who saw his position of Secretary-General as
providing him with a mandate for seeking and
restoring peace and who lived and died in that
cause. The third was U Thant, a blunt,
straightforward and outspoken individual, .a man
of proven negotiating ability; the fourth was
Kurt Waldheim, a professional and careful
diplomat. We salute them all. The present
Secretary- General joins this line of succession
in the face of many problems and difficulties,
which he has already identified as conflicts
between national aims and Charter goals... resort
to confrontation, violence and even war in
pursuit of what are perceived as vital interests,
claims or aspirations" . We are confident that
with his characteristic caution, his mature
intelligence and his wealth of diplomatic
experience he too stands ready to inscribe his
name on the roll of honor. I can assure him that
my country, Botswana, will heed his appeal to all
Governments for their conscious recommitment to
the j purposes and principles of the Charter. We
pledge our support for the continued search for
solutions to the different problems facing the
United Nations and the world.
334. The role of the President of the General
Assembly is no less challenging, onerous or
noble. We are equally confident that Mr. Hollai
will hold aloft the honor of his great country.
335. We are not so presumptuous as to think we
have the capacity or, indeed, the capability of
commenting on every item on the agenda of the
Assembly. We shall therefore confine our remarks
to a few only.
336. The scenario of international economic
development co-operation remains bleak. There
has been a further deterioration, especially
since 1981, in the international economic
environment. As we are all aware, the economic
problems of developed countries are being
transmitted to developing countries through a
variety channels, and vice versa. The development
crisis has deepened throughout the world, and the
development process has come to a virtual
standstill in many countries. The dynamism of
international trade, particularly in products of
special importance to developing countries, is
no longer assured as a mechanism for growth. The
shrinkage in the real flow of external resources
and development assistance has considerably
jeopardized the growth prospects and
opportunities in many developing countries. The
spirit of international co-operation has suffered
greatly.
337. In these circumstances, the current world
economic crisis can no longer be considered as
merely as another phenomenon of poor growth
figures. Nor can it be considered in complete
isolation from the interests of developing
countries. Recent experience has amply
demonstrated that the worsening world economic
conditions are of a structural, not a cyclical,
nature. The establishment of a new international
economic order could have greatly facilitated the
structural adjustment and strengthened the
possibility for economic revival and prosperity
of the world as a whole, including the developed
countries. However, short- tern. Interests
carried the day, and we have missed many
opportunities to facilitate structural
adjustments and give impetus to economic growth.
338. Commodity issues have emerged as major
trade problems for many developing countries. The
recent slump in commodity prices, together with
the rising tide of protectionism, has led to
reduced export j proceeds, increased external
indebtedness and a j worsened balance of payments
in many developing j countries. My own country,
Botswana, is in no different position. The
instability in commodity trade might have been
minimized, even curbed, had there been a fully
operational integrated program for commodities.
The convening of the sixth session of UNCTAD, in
June 1983 in Belgrade, offers yet another
opportunity to act on these issues, which should
not be missed this time
339. In spite of the worsening world economic
conditions, the international community has
succeeded in achieving some successes since 1981.
The Agreement Establishing the Common Fund for
Commodities and the Substantial New Programme of
Action for the 1980s for the Least Developed
Countries" adopted at the Paris Conference are
two such achievements.if these are to be
translated into action, there is much the
international community should undertake in order
to avoid talking about the same issues all over
again at UNCTAD.
340. It is equally necessary to remove the
considerable uncertainties which currently
prevail in the international financial system.
Recent developments have caused concern regarding
the capability of the international financial
system to deal with the effects of the
unfavorable .economic environment.
341. We must persist in carrying through
global negotiations on international financial
issues which restore balance to the system which
affects us all.
342. Internal upheavals as well as wars born
of external aggression are a common phenomenon in
different parts of the world. The irony of the
matter is that in many of these situations it is
easy to identify the involvement of those Powers
to which the custodianship of peace and security
has been permanently entrusted by us all. As a
result, the principal organs of the United
Nations can only chum out innocuous resolutions
expressing their grave concern at such
interventions and calling for the withdrawal of
foreign troops, often without naming them. Such
resolutions are quite often frustrated by the
non-compliance of the States concerned. The
United Nations has thus become a place for the
expression of indignation and the trading of
recriminations. We have been guilty of
diminishing its capacity to deal effectively with
issues affecting peace. We ourselves are weakened
thereby, as there is no other instrument to which
we can turn for the solution of international
problems. My delegation therefore supports the
Secretary-General in his call to all Governments
to recommit themselves consciously to the Charter.
343. Mr. Fayez Sayegh, a Palestinian scholar,
says in his book "The crux of the Palestinian
problem is the fate of a people and its homeland.
It is the piecemeal conquest and continued
seizure of the entire country by military force.
It is the forcible dispossession and displacement
of the bulk of the indigenous population and the
subjugation of the rest".
344. In its resolution 521 (1982) of 19
September the Security Council unanimously
condemned the massacre of Palestinian civilians
in their refugee camps. The stench of death
continues to hang like early morning mist over
west Beirut and the grief of those brutally
treated people is immeasurable. Nations severally
have condemned this criminal act perpetrated
against an unsuspecting and defenseless people.
Many searching and pertinent questions are being
asked. Was it not enough to have made them the
refugees they were and to have thus condemned
them to live in squalor and misery? Why murder
them? Had they not suffered sufficient
humiliation when their leadership was dispersed
throughout the length and breadth of the Arab
world? Why massacre them? Protestations of
innocence should neither supplant nor be a
substitute for response to the need to establish
the circumstances and the enormity of the crime.
For that reason, my country welcomes the decision
to hold an independent and impartial
investigation. This heinous crime will remain a
dark eventin the life of nations, its
perpetrators and their collaborators eternal
villains. History has not always been benevolent
and charitable to Israel, yet the continued
occupation of Arab lands by military force
provides no justifiable compensation. "The crux
of the Palestinian problem", says Mr. Sayegh, "is
the fate of a people and its homeland".
45. As long as nations in the area deny one
another the right to exist as sovereign and
independent entities within clearly defined and
secure borders, peace in the Middle East will
remain elusive and unattainable.
346. We implore the United States, from the
vantage point of its special relationship with
Israel, and the League of Arab States to
reconcile their peace proposals and to intensify
their search for a solution acceptable to all
parties.
347. The situation in Afghanistan continues to
defy solution. Foreign troops have not yet been
withdrawn and the refugee population in Iran and
Pakistan has reached the 3.5 million mark.
Efforts to bring the parties to the negotiating
table have hitherto been of no avail. The
intractable nature of the situation typifies the
impotence of the United Nations in the face of
super-Power Involvement. It is in such
circumstances that the words of the
Secretary-General stand out in sharp relief, to
be quoted and quoted yet again—a recommitment of
Governments to the Charter.
348. We appeal to the parties involved to
engage in negotiations designed to secure the
withdrawal of foreign forces, the elimination of
external interference in the internal affairs of
Afghanistan and the facilitation of the return of
the refugees.
349. It is almost four years since the
Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Council
supplanted the Pol Pot regime. Attempts to reach
a political solution by way of negotiations among
the parties concerned have been frustrated by
boycotts. The end to three decades of war in
Indo-China is not in sight and regional
insecurity has become a matter of serious concern
for South-East Asian nations.
350. The complete withdrawal of all foreign
troops, the cessation of external interference
and the unimpeded exercise by the people of its
right to elect a Government of its choice is what
we desire for Kampuchea. This is our litany.
351. Korea remains a divided country. The
North- South dialogue, acclaimed by .many nations
as a concrete manifestation of the determination
of the Korean people to reunify their divided
peninsula, has been suspended since 1973.
Proposals by one side are relentlessly spumed by
the other side. Notwithstanding this regrettable
circumstance, Botswana persists in its view that
the reunification of Korea is a matter to be
decided by the Koreans themselves in direct
ipter-Korean negotiations. It remains for the
United Nations to continue to encourage the
resumption of those talks without pre-conditions
or external interference.
352. Similarly, we support the continuation of
the intercommunal talks in Cyprus. We believe
that their efficacy could be enhanced by the
speedy withdrawal of foreign troops from the
island.
353. 333. The position of my country regarding
the Falklands crisis has already been made dear.
It does no harm to reiterate it here. Botswana
does not accept the use of armed intervention to
enforce territorial claims. Our condemnation of
such action by Argentina was therefore without
prejudice to the merits or otherwise of its
claim. We do not regard the Falklands as an
integral part of Britain, some 8,000 miles away.
Such a concept belongs to the imperialism of
bygone centuries. Our view is that the Falklands
is a colony of Britain. The Falklanders, like all
colonized peoples, have the right to
self-determination without external pressure or
intimidation. We resent and resist the change of
one colonialism for another in Africa. We
maintain the same principle in the United Nations.
354. A year ago the General Assembly met in an
emergency special session to discuss the question
of Namibia. Volumes of words were spoken on that
occasion, as they have been spoken since the
international challenge to South Africa's
occupation of the Territory of South West Africa
in 1946. The general Assembly was reminded then
that the United Nations plan for Namibia
remained, after three years, a pious declaration
of intent, because nothing had come of it. Ft
must be admitted that there has now been some
audible shuffling of feet by the contact group
and the South African representatives, but there
has been no appreciable move forward or dramatic
change in the situation; no peace in Namibia. We
submit that the validity of the vaunted
"significant progress" made in the negotiations
relating to the constitutional principles and the
preparedness of South Africa to move
expeditiously to resolve the question of the
composition and deployment of the United Nations
Transition Assistance Group is being somewhat
neutralized and rendered ineffectual b the
unfortunate linkage of the withdrawal of South
African forces from Namibia and the progress of
that Territory to independence with the
withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola, in the
name of regional security. We consider this
requirement strange, especially as it is the
South African and not the Cuban forces which have
been guilty of trans-border violations and have
intensified their war of aggression against the
People's Republic of Angola, even as the Namibian
plan is being negotiated.
355. Of equal concern to my delegation is a
new plan whereby South Africa seeks to establish
a so-called more effective interim Government,
reported to be structured on ethnic lines, in
Namibia. This plan, coupled with the possible use
of Walvis Bay in a "manner prejudicial to the
independence of Namibia ", in disregard of
Security Council resolution 432 (1978), would not
only delay progress towards an acceptable
solution but might in fact frustrate all the
efforts already made to resolve the problem. A
genuine solution of the Namibian problem can be
reached, and soon, if South Africa desists from
its recurrent invention of extraneous excuses.
After many years of war waged by South Africa:
forces against the people of Namibia, it is not
in their interest that a settlement be further
delayed by being subordinated to or coupled with
the withdrawal of foreign forces from a third
country.
356. My country, one of the front-line States
bordering on Namibia, continues to call for the
immediate implementation of Security Council
resolution 435 (1978) as the generally accepted
peaceful means of ensuring the attainment of
independence by that United Nations Territory.
Negotiations relating to outstanding issues
relevant to that resolution have been
successfully concluded. The process leading to
the liberation of Namibia should be unhindered.
My country looks forward with the most fervent
hopes to seeing a liberated, free, independent
and sovereign Namibia assume its rightful place
in the Assembly at its thirty-eighth session.
357. But the accession of Namibia to
independence will not in itself bring peace to
the southern African region as long as apartheid
and racism continue to be the fundamental tenets
of South Africa's philosophy of government. For
300 years the South African white has asked
himself these questions: Who are we? What is our
destiny? What is our divine and appointed role in
Africa? His answers to those questions are basic
to the theory and practice of apartheid. His
answers are formulated in such a manner as to
perpetuate his image as the divine messenger to
Africa, the torch- bearer of Christian truths and
principles. He is in a class apart, the only
citizen of South Africa. Thus, after 300 years,
the black majority of the South African society
remains aliens in their fatherland. The creation
for them of crowded, over-grazed and generally
denuded so-called homelands, the denial of equal
economic opportunities and power sharing, the
downgraded quality of their education, their
restricted and controlled movement—these and the
many other disabilities they are made to suffer
have increased their frustration and anger and
heightened their determination to secure an
equitable deal for themselves by whatever means.
This should be avoided, for if the manner of
accession to independence by Namibia, whenever it
comes, is to provide any lesson at all, it should
be in the realization that resistance to orderly
and timely change can serve only to condemn even
the unborn of all races to future strife and
suffering.
358. South Africa is fully cognizant of the
ghastliness of such an eventuality and is groping
for a solution. Whilst we welcome the reformist
initiatives of South Africa, we consider the
so-called constitutional dispensation to be
hollow. It is hollow because it denies the black
majority South African citizenship and relegates
them to Bantustans; it is hollow because it
attempts to entice the Indian and Colored South
Africans away from their traditional
identification and solidarity with the other
disadvantaged group, the black South Africans,
without in any way enhancing their political
integration within the South African society. A
system founded on injustice is bound sooner or
later to collapse.
359. Drawing the Colored South Africans and
South Africans of Indian extraction into the plan
whilst excluding 70 per cent of the population
will only increase the areas of polarization and
their ramifications—whites versus non-whites,
black South Africans versus Colored and Indian
South Africans conservative Colored and Indians
versus their progressive compatriots whom they
will brand as renegades from the cause of genuine
liberation.
360. Moreover, it should be conceded that the
avowed objective of converting urban South
African Macks into rurai citizens elsewhere is
not oniy retrograde but ill-considered and
impossible of attainment. To succeed, any p!an
or solution for the South African problem must
take cognizance of these basic truths. Neither
the mercenary invasion of Seychelles nor the
sustained aggression against the People's
Republic of Angola and the continued occupation
of parts of its territory by South African troops
neither the support given to the Uniao Nacional
para a Independencia Total de Angola [LW/7/1] in
Angola, the Mozambican National Resistance in
Mozambique or the Lesotho Liberation Army in
Lesotho nor that given to dissidents in Zambia
and Zimbabwe, all instruments of the
destabilization of neighbouring States will
silence the call for change within South Africa.
361. Our undying refrain is the continuing
call urging South Africa to engage in meaningful
dialogue with the recognized leaders of all the
citizens of that country and to work out a
solution acceptable to all.
362. The relevant exhortation in the Lusaka
Manifesto on Southern Africa is still as fresh
and as valid today as when it was made some 13
years ago:
"... we are demanding an opportunity for all the
people of these States, working together as equal
individual citizens, to work out for themselves
the institutions and the system of government
under which they will, by general consent, live
together and work together to build a harmonious
society."